Sermons

Blessed in the Dirt

In the Beatitudes, Jesus shows us what it truly means to be blessed, revealing the truth about the kin-dom. It isn’t about winning or getting in.

Being blessed by God means lifting up the lowest, not living like a king
Saints A | Matthew 5:1-12

Do you feel blessed?

I don’t mean #blessed or social media blessed. I mean really blessed by God. Right now, in this space, this beautiful building, this wonderful church gathered to learn how to love from one another. Here, today, do you feel blessed?

Did you feel blessed when the alarm went off and you got dressed? Did you feel blessed on the drive and finding the parking spot, your walk from the lot?

This week, waiting for the phone to ring or when the job search felt most frustrating? When the kids wouldn’t leave you alone or you just sat at home, did you feel blessed?

The anxiety building, our wheels keep spinning, I’m not sure “blessing” is what many of us are feeling these days.

But blessing is a funny word. Here, in this passage, the Greek is Makarios. Which has had several meanings in its life. Its origin is of the gods. And came to speak of the dead rising to the gods. Rising from death to new life!

Over time, it came to mean the elite, the special, the ones to whom God grants favor, elevation, rising above the common.

Blessed by status, supremacy, the best, kissed by God, the prom queen and king, the student serfs left watching.

There’s a way that blessed is a dirty word. A word for a God who loves the strong and the powerful. God’s blessing, the manifest destiny of oppression and murder, ordained by God and called blessing.

To me, the word is a different image entirely.

Makarios was an Orthodox bishop from India who taught at Alma College for 25 years. His smile was as wide and welcoming as the gospel he professed. He is blessed.